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Veggie Grill doesn’t get it. Or sadly and more precisely, they do get it but have no shame. They are a disgraceful, pathetic company, and here’s why.

I have had to fight a one-man fight to get them to stop misleading their customers. It has been ugly and they have refused to publicly acknowledge what they’ve done, but in a classic “actions speak louder than words” way they’ve — kicking and screaming — made the changes I demanded, EXCEPT for my demand that they explain to their customers what happened. Their latest stealth move — and they are all stealth moves because there has not been one public statement on the matter in the last two months — was to alter their regular menu yesterday in a way that will shock you.

On top is what the menu used to say, the bottom is the new version

Did you spot the difference? Sneaky, right? Does this look like they’re moving in a positive direction to a more open form of communication between a company and its customers? I think not. Because instead of simply removing the misleading statement that “Our specially seasoned and marinated proteins, Chickin’ and Veggie-Steak, are made from organic and non-GMO soybeans, wheat and peas” they’re now saying they’re “made from organic or non-GMO soybeans, wheat and peas.” (Emphasis added emphatically.) So what the hell does that mean? It means nothing! Our specially seasoned and marinated proteins, Chickin’ and Veggie-Steak, are made from Academy Award winning or non-GMO soybeans, wheat and peas. That’s just as accurate as what their menu now says. Have you ever seen such disdain toward customers? Such cynicism?

And gardein, the company that makes the Chickin’ and Veggie-Steak for Veggie Grill, isn’t willing to say that these items are made with organic soybeans, wheat and peas. When I asked them earlier this week to confirm the accuracy of Veggie Grill’s February 4th tweet which stated “Gardein says that the soy, wheat and peas used in their product to us is organic & non-GMO” this is how gardein replied:

“Wherever possible”?! Really?! What kind of phrasing is that? That seems like slippery, lawyered wiggle room if ever I heard it! Not only does gardein also use the “or” construction, which Veggie Grill finally adopted yesterday, but they further protect themselves by saying “wherever possible” — a phrase that Veggie Grill has not yet added to their slippery statement, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

So the question is: why does Veggie Grill insist on throwing around the word “organic”? Did Veggie Grill make a simple mistake here? Did they not understand that gardein very carefully chooses its words since not a single one of the 22 items on the gardein products page lists organic soybeans, organic wheat or organic peas in its ingredients? That’s right, I went through the ingredients lists of all 22 gardein items on their website and the only organic ingredients listed were “organic cane sugar,” “organic ancient grain flour,” “organic beetroot fiber” and “organic rice flour.” That’s it.

But Veggie Grill has been saying on its menus for at least two years that its veggie proteins are “made with soy and wheat that are organic and non-GMO.” Meanwhile, anyone who wanted to could simply take a look at the “Veggie Proteins” page on Veggie Grill’s own website and see a list of ingredients for their Chickin’, Veggie-Steak, and Veggie-Steak burger, which listed no organic soy, wheat or peas, merely organic evaporated cane juice and organic beet root fiber. That is, anyone could take a look at that Veggie Proteins page on their website until yesterday, when it vanished. Now when you click that link, you get this:

But don’t worry, I took a screen shot of the entire page for my original post because I knew Veggie Grill wouldn’t want anyone to see that ingredients page once I drew attention to it (though I have to admit it took them way longer that I thought it would to realize how bad it made them look and remove it).

In my experience, when a company makes a mistake, even a series of huge mistakes as Veggie Grill has done here, they cop to it, apologize to their customers, make things right with everyone, and move on. Not Veggie Grill. They have said nothing in two months. Not a word. Well, not a word unless you count favoriting and retweeting attacks on me and sending a private DM via twitter whenever a prominent critic comes along asking for an explanation. I’m not kidding. Take a look at the response to these two food and public health experts. This is a company bathed in secrecy.

How come those people get an explanation but their loyal everyday customers get NOTHING? And how laughable for Veggie Grill to use the word “confusion” here. I think Veggie Grill is the only one who’s confused. And I’m curious, do you think a word like “confusion” could cover a situation where, let’s say, hypothetically, someone was trying to confuse people?

And for what? Why does Veggie Grill keep insisting on using the word “organic” when describing its chickin’ and steak and burgers? Is Veggie Grill desperate to attach a veneer of health to their enterprise in the same way that Coca-Cola sponsors the Olympics in the hope you will associate the company with fitness and athleticism? Is it all about throwing around the word “organic” in the hope that the customer won’t notice the items that are processed and fried?

Because at this point, it’s not clear why Veggie Grill is doing what it’s doing, since they flat out refuse to say, but one thing that’s clear is that it’s NOT a mistake. Not after changing the menu under pressure, and deciding to keep the word “organic” in there anyway, just in a new even more “confusing” usage. Call it what you want, but at this point in time it is anything but a mistake.

The only mistake Veggie Grill has made is in handling this matter like amateurs, and often like children. And by doing this, I fear they have damaged the prospects of vegan businesses in general. I have taken a lot of heat on this topic from vegans who say this has nothing to do with veganism, and that organic is not our fight so why am I criticizing a vegan business, but aside from the question that has been raised as to if they’ve been misleading people about their organic claims, what else might they have been misleading people about, there is the issue of showing the larger marketplace that a vegan business can conduct itself professionally, and can have what it takes to succeed.

Is this really how you want a vegan business to behave? Should they really get a pass for being vegan? I think just the opposite. And I’m not the only one:

Come on, Veggie Grill, enough is enough. It’s time to give your customers an explanation. You owe them at least that. At least. Get your act together. Finally. Don’t you want to move on? I know that I do.

The main thing that happened is that immediately after I published my post, Veggie Grill finally removed the claim on its website that “All of our veggie proteins and tempeh are organic and non-GMO.” And this past weekend, more than six weeks after I first brought the matter to Veggie Grill’s attention, all stores were told to pull all copies of the menu containing that claim, according to a manager I spoke to at one of their locations.

And yet despite these actions, there hasn’t been a single word from Veggie Grill about any of this. Given that they deleted the language from their website that I challenged, and ordered their store managers to remove all those menus, obviously they realized I was right. These actions seem to be a pretty clear admission that they had misled thousands of customers about the organic nature of their product.

But did Veggie Grill make any kind of public admission? Did they apologize for challenging me initially on this? More important, did they apologize to their customers about this? No, not a word.

But they weren’t *entirely* without response. They did favorite a mysterious tweet that attacked me. A tweet from @vegan, the same person who owns vegan.com, a person whom I can’t remember ever having a conversation with before, and who doesn’t even follow me on Twitter, and who out of nowhere tweeted one morning:

And Veggie Grill favorited that tweet, a tweet from someone with 54,000 followers, a tweet that occurred not long after my blog post went up. And not only that, Veggie Grill later retweeted a tweet from, yup, that same person:

I don’t know what the connection is between @vegan and VeggieGrill, but Veggie Grill sure must have appreciated the support because since then they’ve retweeted a number of random tweets from @vegan to their 74,000 followers, even though I went back months prior to my post and didn’t see a single retweet of @vegan by VeggieGrill. I guess one hand washes the other and all.

And that favorite of the attack on me, and the retweet above, have been the entirety of Veggie Grill’s response. Unbelievable, I know, and it’s both pathetic and shocking at the same time. Up until this, I thought Veggie Grill was a well-run company. I thought they had what it takes to grow the company. I thought the leadership was in place to actually turn this into a vegan giant that could divert people from meaty fast food all across America. But now my confidence in them is shattered.

It turns out that it’s amateur hour over there at Veggie Grill, which makes me sad. Any well-run company would have apologized to their customers, issued some type of statement about the matter, tried to make right with those who were misled, and begun to move on. But not Veggie Grill. Instead they have shown disdain for their customers, which is awful, considering how loyal their customers can be.

So loyal that many have attacked me on various social media platforms, and not just @vegan. The general opinion of the attackers seems to be: This is a vegan company spreading veganism so if the thing they’ve been misleading people about doesn’t pertain to the vegan nature of their products it’s okay. Then there have been some people on the other side who have basically said: If they misled customers about the organic nature of their products, what else might they be misleading people about?

Personally, I trust that they are indeed 100 percent vegan and committed to that. And I should add that I have never questioned their non-GMO claims, nor their claims that their tempeh, which is not from gardein, is organic.

But it’s important to note that Veggie Grill still has not addressed the claim on their regular menu, which is still online and in stores, that “Our specially seasoned and marinated proteins, Chickin’ and Veggie-Steak, are made from organic and non-GMO soybeans, wheat and peas. Produced by GARDEIN™, these hearty proteins are deliciously satisfying, easily digested and packed with nutrients and fiber.” This despite the fact that Veggie Grill’s own list of ingredients for these gardein items on Veggie Grill’s own website shows only the beet root fiber and the evaporated cane juice as being organic. On their own website! And Veggie Grill has been claiming on menus for at least two years that the wheat and soy in their gardein products are organic, even though the ingredients list that’s still up on their website today says otherwise!

Where are the answers from Veggie Grill? Is anyone in charge there? Is this what they think of their customers?

Oh, and I almost forgot that they also unfollowed me on Twitter. That’s the way the adults there decided to deal with this issue: they covered their eyes.

I like Veggie Grill. I eat there a lot. But a few months back they introduced a new menu. It’s called the “mindful living menu.” And immediately I became mindful of a claim at the top of the menu: “A menu curated to highlight items that are lower in calories, high in protein and nutrient-dense. All of our veggie proteins and tempeh are organic and non-GMO.” What? Your “veggie proteins” are organic? Ummmm…

But that’s not all. On their regular non-mindful menu, it says “so what’s in Chickin'” and then says, “Our specially seasoned and marinated proteins, Chickin’ and Veggie-Steak, are made from organic and non-GMO soybeans, wheat and peas. Produced by GARDEIN™, these hearty proteins are deliciously satisfying, easily digested and packed with nutrients and fiber.”

There’s only one problem with these claims. gardein is not organic.

On gardein’s website it says: “Wherever possible, we use the best organic and certified non-gmo ingredients, with the majority coming from north american farms.” But gardein is not certified organic, it doesn’t even have the lesser 7o percent organic certification that reads: “Made with organic…” When you ask gardein customer service, they say: “No, it’s not organic but is made with some organic ingredients.” When you look on their most recent packaging you will see that it says that they use “organic cane sugar” and “organic ancient grain flour” but that’s all I could find marked organic after looking at the packaging for several different items. And nowhere does it say that the main protein ingredients, the “soybeans, wheat and peas” mentioned on Veggie Grill’s current menu, are organic.

So when the mindful menu first came out on January 20, 2014 I responded immediately with some doubtful tweets:

I got no response. Which was strange. Veggie Grill’s tweets, according to their twitter account itself, are “Tweeted By Co-Founder Kevin Boylan” and I have always found Kevin to be prompt, friendly, responsive and overall one of the more impressive corporate honchos out there on the Internet. But this time the silence was deafening.

Then five days later I saw a tweet from the Cornucopia Institute about soy. According to one of the Cornucopia Institute’s “scorecards,” gardein is not organic. So I tweeted at Cornucopia to see what they thought about Veggie Grill’s claims. Not long after, I received the following tweet from Kevin:

Okay, finally, a response. But then I heard nothing. After ten days of “staying tuned” I complained on twitter about their lack of a response, which prompted the following tweet from them:

I was shocked by this answer. Organic? REALLY? That seemed so implausible. I’d never seen gardein say that about their soy, wheat and peas. Ever. So was gardein giving Kevin bad information? Had Kevin really gotten this information from gardein? Now the mystery grew.

But there was one way I knew I could get an answer. gardein always has a huge booth at the Natural Products Expo West. And I had a feeling that this year would be no exception. I would ask one of the high-end gardein execs who regularly are in attendance there.

gardein’s Yves Potvin was friendly, forthcoming, and even swept his own booth. Impressive guy.

So you can imagine my surprise and delight when the first person I noticed at the gardein booth was not some stereotypical moronic marketing geek who probably doesn’t even eat gardein themselves and gorges on meat all day and holds vegans in contempt, but rather Yves Potvin, the founder and owner of gardein himself! Score! So I struck up a conversation with Yves, who could not have been more friendly. In fact, he seemed like a really great guy. And I asked him flat out if gardein is organic. And he said no it’s not organic, but it contains some organic ingredients. And then I asked him if there were different products that are organic for food service and restaurants. And he very clearly shook his head and said no, it’s all the same gardein.

Wow. Just wow.

If only Veggie Grill had answered my question about their “mindful living menu” in a straightforward and honest way, I never would have been driven to this point. But this new revelation was a million times bigger than the mindful living menu problem. Because on its regular menu, for years, gardein has claimed as you can see above that its gardein is made from organic soybeans, wheat and peas.

And let me tell you, my fans are just terrific. I have received older Veggie Grill menus from people, which has enabled me to construct a timeline. Here’s a menu from early 2010, before the Santa Monica location of Veggie Grill even opened, stating that their tempeh (which is not made by gardein) is from organic soybeans but saying nothing about any organic components for their gardein “Chillin’ Chickin’ & Veggie-Steak.”

Veggie Grill menu from 2010

And then I have a menu from two years ago, March 2012, where the organic claim has begun to sneak in:

Veggie Grill menu from March, 2012

In this March, 2012 menu, Veggie Grill claims that their “Chillin’ Chickin’ & Veggie-Steak” are “made with soy and wheat that are organic and non-GMO.” Keep in mind, like I mentioned above, the soy and wheat on the retail gardein packs are not identified as organic, just the cane sugar and ancient wheat flour. And Yves said it’s all the same gardein. Yet FOR TWO YEARS Veggie Grill has been telling their customers that the soy and wheat in its gardein are organic. And for at least a year it’s been claiming that the peas are organic, too.

I started to think, is this really possible? Could I be wrong? Despite what the owner and founder of gardein himself told me? Despite what gardein customer service told me? Despite what every retail gardein package I could find was telling me?

And then I found it. Hidden in plain sight. Right on Veggie Grill’s very own website. TODAY. Take a look:

There it is. An entire webpage of ingredients. And the only organic ingredients I see mentioned in any of this are “organic beet root fiber” and “organic evaporated cane juice.” The wheat, the soy, the peas… nothing marked organic. (The Too Good Tempeh has organically grown soybeans and organic apple cider vinegar but I have never disputed that the tempeh is organic, and the tempeh is not from gardein. I included it here only because I wanted to reproduce the web page for you in its entirety.)

And again, this page is still on their website RIGHT NOW. (Of course, as soon as they see this they will take it down, but don’t worry, I took plenty of screen shots.)

So for at least two years Veggie Grill has been telling its customers on its menus that the wheat and soy in its gardein are organic, and all this time on its very own website it was revealing the true ingredients: that the soy and wheat and peas in its gardein are not organic.

How did this happen? And what is Veggie Grill going to do about it to make good to its customers? There are currently 23 stores in the Veggie Grill chain. And take a look at their menu, gardein is involved in the bulk of their sales. This constitutes nothing short of a crisis for Veggie Grill. All because they were not forthcoming with me when I asked a simple question about their mindful living menu.

At minimum — AT MINIMUM — Veggie Grill needs to give refunds and credits to all its customers who bought these so-called organic products. We are talking millions if not tens of millions of dollars in givebacks. And unlike many companies that might struggle to find a way to figure out who bought what, Veggie Grill has had a rewards system in place for the last three months that requires customers to send a photo of their receipt to Veggie Grill for reward points. So AT MINIMUM this is a start for Veggie Grill, since they have an easy way to know exactly who bought gardein-based items during the existence of the rewards program and give those people credit for those meals.

But the problem goes much deeper. I am not contacting lawyers about this, even though you can imagine how the eyes of a class-action lawyer would light up at the possibility of a lawsuit here. And I have not contacted any state or federal authorities. But it’s time for Veggie Grill to publicly apologize to me, to admit that a hideous breach of trust with their customers has occurred, and to make right with them. Their continued silence on the matter is only making things worse.

Like I said, I like Veggie Grill. I eat there a lot. I hope they thrive and continue to grow and achieve their plans of blanketing the country and eventually the world with Veggie Grills. But this was bad. Real bad.